“Sadness is just happiness turned on its ass—it's all showbiz!” — Guy Maddin Happiness Copy Share Image
You get to have some mischief before you're basically a blackened banana, impotent, and nothing to be afraid of. — Guy Maddin Copy Share Image
I'm a nervous wreck. If it's a 20-day shoot, at lunchtime on the first day, I'm thinking "Only 19 and a half… — Guy Maddin Copy Share Image
Some Jungian or Freudian would tell me I'm just trying to go back to the womb... at gunpoint, if necessary. — Guy Maddin Copy Share Image
I'm starting to frighten myself, because I'm backsliding into my devil-may-care attitude. I'm sure it's going to catch up with me. — Guy Maddin Attitude Copy Share Image
I feel the need to chastise myself. A movie that's a partial musical, full-on melodrama, should require a tremendous amount of planning. — Guy Maddin Copy Share Image
In many relationships that I've had people just try to own the other person. — Guy Maddin People Copy Share Image
Those are my goals, you know. To be smart, tasteless, and feeling. Something to shoot for. — Guy Maddin Being smart Copy Share Image
I love melodrama. I love the simple fact. When you read Euripides he's a page turner. It's like reading a Mexican comic… — Guy Maddin Book Copy Share Image
Well, I had a wolverine. It was supposed to be a cat, but Jason (Patric) is allergic to cats. I can't remember… — Guy Maddin Copy Share Image
I went to see Chicago after I finished shooting, and say what you want about it, but that thing was so meticulously… — Guy Maddin Chicago Copy Share Image
I am no longer haunted by my dead father. I am no longer haunted by childhood home. There's so many things I've… — Guy Maddin Childhood Copy Share Image
No one ever gets to see Foley artists at work, and they're so strange. They see the world differently: things as things… — Guy Maddin Art Copy Share Image
Older recordings just seemed to take me somewhere into my own pre-history. That's always been an interesting, sort of sphinx-like territory for… — Guy Maddin History Copy Share Image
But in the act of attempting to imitate I discovered that I had a voice of my own. Whether I liked it… — Guy Maddin Copy Share Image
I was completely broke, so I started saying yes to everything. I said yes to a woman who approached me about shooting… — Guy Maddin Ballet Copy Share Image
I've long believed that anybody who is in the act of remembering childhood is a poet, because you're thinking back on times… — Guy Maddin Childhood Copy Share Image
If you sit in on a film class with students, their big complaint is "That's not like real life." They don't realize… — Guy Maddin Allegory Copy Share Image
The Forbidden Room and Seances are related. Both of them are made up of lost film matter adapted through the medium of… — Guy Maddin Copy Share Image
Whatever experimental film aromas cloaked my movies were because I'm a gleefully clumsy, primitive filmmaker. I really like traditional pleasingly narrative films,… — Guy Maddin Copy Share Image
I just discovered that there were so many lost movies that were all mine to take if I wanted to take them.… — Guy Maddin Copy Share Image
Seances is an internet project where I intended to adapt at least a hundred and maybe three hundred lost films into ten… — Guy Maddin Archives Copy Share Image
I started making movies in my late 20s, that time in an artist's career that often sees artists just imitating things that… — Guy Maddin Age Copy Share Image
It's funny how film is the slowest art form to adapt to freedom. It's had freedom all along. It could've done whatever… — Guy Maddin Art Copy Share Image
I think I've indulged in a pathological, chronic nostalgia over the years, which I've traced back to my childhood. I was the… — Guy Maddin Copy Share Image
It feels good to finally stand on top of vanquished sloth, and actually impress some people as a hard worker. — Guy Maddin Copy Share Image
Making the ballet really taught me how to get things moving. Ballet dancers don't stand still. — Guy Maddin Ballet Copy Share Image
Thank God I've never been taken to task on a talk-radio show. I won't go on a talk-radio show. — Guy Maddin Copy Share Image
I probably live in the best province for independent filmmakers. Manitoba has a sort of thieving-magpie approach, trying to lift productions from… — Guy Maddin Approach Copy Share Image
The spirit of my films... I always want them to be kind of contrarian. Meticulous on the one hand, but unbelievably sloppy… — Guy Maddin Copy Share Image
I literally designed and built the sets myself, and I kind of liked it. I always gave myself eight weeks to do… — Guy Maddin Copy Share Image
I just respect audiences to understand that that's what goes on in movies. I just try to make movies that respect the… — Guy Maddin Audience Copy Share Image
I define melodrama as truth uninhibited. It's the kind of truth we dream about. Rather than melodrama being exaggerated, it's actually uninhibited.… — Guy Maddin Dream Copy Share Image
I've been so lazy all my life. I used to literally lie on the couch, up until the age of 35, fearing… — Guy Maddin Age Copy Share Image
Silent films are fairytales. All stories are more or less fairytales, and removing speech makes everything more universal. It makes specific characters… — Guy Maddin Action Copy Share Image
If I want to keep making films for a few more years, I probably should be willing to adapt. I've sort of… — Guy Maddin Cinema Copy Share Image
